12 November 2012 7:10 PM

Colorado has gone to pot and is taking its next generation with it

If we needed another lesson in why not to condone cannabis, then
the death of Lillian Groves delivered it. Two years ago, at just 14 years old, she was mown down by a driver high
on cannabis. It later transpired there
was so little police awareness of the disastrous effects of this drug that the
driver was not tested for it until nine hours after the accident.

Thanks to her family’s brave campaign to bring drug driving
awareness into the classroom (filmed by BBC London in Lillian’s school last
week); thanks too to the assiduous work of campaigners like the former biology
teacher Mary Brett (who deserves an honour for drawing public and political
attention to the scientific literature on disastrous effects of this noxious
drug on the brain and behaviour) and to the dedicated reporting of the problem
by this newspaper, we are far more aware today of the terrible collateral
damage of this drug.

Parents are, rightly, less sanguine than before about their
children ‘experimenting’ with cannabis. This could be the reason we’ve seen a
steady drop in teen use.

Symptoms they once put down to
adolescent blues – declining school performance, uncooperativeness, day time
sleeping, uncontrollability and aggression – now are known to be signs of the effect of cannabis use. More and more
experts say there is no other drug, not even alcohol,
that affects academic performance so negatively as cannabis.

So I found it particularly depressing that in the week new drugs
cannabis awareness classes were shown on TV here, Colorado, in the USA, voted
to legalise the drug responsible for Lillian’s death. Just as we are getting clued up, the United
States of America, once in the forefront
of teen drug prevention, seems to be sinking into a cannabis induced haze.

I read that no sooner than the
measure had passed than cheering
people were 'pouring out of bars in Denver, the tangy scent of pot filling the
air'. People, it
turned out to be, were more bothered about voting for pot than for their preferred
Presidential candidate. Yes, 1,307,288
people voted to legalise marijuana, more than the 1,252,269 to cast a ballot
for Barack Obama for President, more than the 1,135,165 who voted for Mitt
Romney.

It begs the question whether their judgment was already clouded by
the widely available ‘medical marijuana’ they’d voted in three years before in
2009 - one of 18 US states to have done this.

It would seem so.

For the pro pot propaganda campaign sold to them on the promise of
social justice for all and tax revenues for health was less than honest. As Dr Ed Gogek suggested last week in the New
York Times (November 7th) it was cynical.

Their original ‘lie’ he
pointed out was that marijuana would only be allowed for relief of pain for
serious illnesses like cancer. Today in both Oregon and Colorado, where ‘pain’
need accounts for 94 per cent of the medi pot card holders, serious illnesses
barely register. Pain of course is easy to fake and almost impossible to
disprove.

Nearer the truth, he argues, is that most medical marijuana recipients
are drug abusers or addicts faking or exaggerating their problems. No one
should be taken in.

The fact is that whether on Venice Beach in California or in the
Colorado countryside, marijuana is routinely touted under the thinnest of
pretences of medical need. Herbal Wellness in Colorado advertises, ‘more than
35 strains of the best edibles in town, multiple tinctures, hash, hand-rolled
joints and clones’. Young visitors
reporting back say it is a complete joke.

But the legalisers in Colorado brazenly claim that ‘regulation’ of
medical marijuana has ‘already’ reduced teen use; that it has only gone up in states where MMJ had not
been legalised.

To the contrary.

The data shows that states with
medical marijuana laws have had much higher rates of teenage marijuana use, an effect that has since gone nationwide.
Since 2008 in the US teenage use has increased 40 per cent Dr Gogek reports,
and heavy use (at least 20 times a month) he says is up 80 per cent.

The implications are more than worrying. The sad thing is they
should know this better than in Colorado.

Earlier this year, in Sweden, I went to a lecture
given by Dr Christian Thurstone, an adolescent addiction psychiatrist from
Denver, the President of the Colorado Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Society.

It was about his research into the devastating impact MMJ on
teenagers, where else but in Colorado.

The numbers using marijuana he told us had shot up by over a third
- from 19% -30% - in the three years since medi pot was legalised. In the same period school expulsions for
drugs had gone up by almost the same amount.

Worse, his survey revealed that 81 per cent of teens knew someone
with a medical marijuana license; and nearly half of them had obtained
marijuana from such adults.

Last week I wondered how
many Coloradans either knew about this research. Did it occur to them that this
week’s vote is bound to decrease teens’ perception of harm even further and
make the drug even more available from adults? Were they even thinking about
them? Because in a few weeks’ time every
adult – citizen or visitor – will be allowed to possess up to one ounce of the
drugs and grow enough plants to keep him and any teens they know regularly
stoned.

The economics are
simple, as the non-partisan RAND research organisation has set out. In response to legalisation they predict that
total consumption will rise - due to increases in the number of new users,
increases in the number of regular and heavy users, and to probable increases
in the duration over which marijuana is consumed by average users.

It is worrying that some
drug lobbies here still don’t get this critical point. Just recently the United
Kingdom Drug Policy Commission disregarding this argument, ‘came out’ and
advocated cannabis decriminalisation here.

Perhaps they should first put themselves in the shoes Governor and
Attorney General of Colorado who face the regulation minefield that voting on
pot has created. They are reported not to be happy. I am not surprised.
After all the buck for drug driving deaths stops with them.

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